Lowering the Drinking Age The day kids turn 18 they are no longer kids, they are adults. As adults there are so many things you can do. From voting to buying a house, but there is one thing 18 year olds can’t do… drink. The three topics I will be talking about in this paper will be traffic related accidents, sexual dangers, and college campus dangers. There are many stories about teenagers drinking underage. Even if the drinking age dropped to eighteen from twenty-one do you think that would fix the problem? What is it that one looks forward to when turning eighteen? Turning eighteen is a huge milestone for many teenagers. They can finally buy a house, move out, go to college, and get married if they want to. But there is one thing that eighteen year olds can’t do, they can’t drink alcohol. Lifting the drinking age to twenty-one is not necessary some say. However, others say that 18 year olds are too irresponsible to drink and that’s why they need to wait until twenty-one. With drinking for anybody, there always seem to be consequences. Some consequences include, making bad decisions, getting pregnant, getting an underage, and if one decides to drive, getting a DWI is on that list as well. One thing that is so talked about is drinking and driving. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd stated, “Personally I would like to see the legal drinking age lifted to twenty-one years, after linking high rates of P-plater road deaths to alcohol consumption.” (Anonymous, February 09, 2010.) It is believed that binge drinking and antisocial behavior were not the sole province of eighteen to twenty-one year-olds. This leaves us with the one question, Is Lowering the drinking age from twenty-one to eighteen a good idea? Some facts and arguments about this idea have stated that studies show that when the federal government did a review of existing research, the bulk of the studies said traffic accidents decreased when the minimum drinking age was raised from eighteen to twenty- one.
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Some studies have even shown that when the drinking age was lowered to eighteen, there was an increase in traffic accidents involving teenagers younger than eighteen. So where are these teenagers getting the alcohol? Why are they drinking at such young ages? Drinking is a privilege; not a right. Taking someone else’s life is not something someone eighteen wants to have on their records. Drinking causes so many problems for someone who is twenty-one, let alone someone who is younger. Alcohol slows the muscles of the body and blurs vision. Alcohol is a dangerous drug to people’s health, and when one starts drinking at a young age, they can become addicted even faster than someone who is older (Tamura, Eileen; Sep/Oct1992). Over 130 college campus in the past several decades know that their students drink. It comes from restaurants and bars into dorms and fraternity houses. Here there is less supervision from adults, and many students feel that this is their freedom. Also when there are friends present it doesn’t take much for one to go out of moderation when it comes to drinking alcohol (Reynolds, April 13, 2011). Students over the last decade say they drink just to get drunk (Smith, Smith; March 3, 1999). They push that they are adults and want to be treated like adults. If they can vote, and join the military why can’t they drink like an adult if that’s the way they are being treated? The drinking age of twenty-one has driven student partying in less public, and thus more dangerous, venues. Safety should be ones main concern, however is it any different if you’re eighteen and drunk or twenty-one and drunk? Something else that has become common in colleges is what is called binge drinking. This is what many do to be welcomed, you could say. More of an initiation type thing. Students who play sports, join a fraternity or sorority house are more prone to binge drinking and the levels of students going to more parties is risen (The Nation’s Health; October 2008). Sexual dangers happen as well when drinking and alcohol is involved. Most of the time one comes into contact with alcohol at
Some studies have even shown that when the drinking age was lowered to eighteen, there was an increase in traffic accidents involving teenagers younger than eighteen. So where are these teenagers getting the alcohol? Why are they drinking at such young ages? Drinking is a privilege; not a right. Taking someone else’s life is not something someone eighteen wants to have on their records. Drinking causes so many problems for someone who is twenty-one, let alone someone who is younger. Alcohol slows the muscles of the body and blurs vision. Alcohol is a dangerous drug to people’s health, and when one starts drinking at a young age, they can become addicted even faster than someone who is older (Tamura, Eileen; Sep/Oct1992). Over 130 college campus in the past several decades know that their students drink. It comes from restaurants and bars into dorms and fraternity houses. Here there is less supervision from adults, and many students feel that this is their freedom. Also when there are friends present it doesn’t take much for one to go out of moderation when it comes to drinking alcohol (Reynolds, April 13, 2011). Students over the last decade say they drink just to get drunk (Smith, Smith; March 3, 1999). They push that they are adults and want to be treated like adults. If they can vote, and join the military why can’t they drink like an adult if that’s the way they are being treated? The drinking age of twenty-one has driven student partying in less public, and thus more dangerous, venues. Safety should be ones main concern, however is it any different if you’re eighteen and drunk or twenty-one and drunk? Something else that has become common in colleges is what is called binge drinking. This is what many do to be welcomed, you could say. More of an initiation type thing. Students who play sports, join a fraternity or sorority house are more prone to binge drinking and the levels of students going to more parties is risen (The Nation’s Health; October 2008). Sexual dangers happen as well when drinking and alcohol is involved. Most of the time one comes into contact with alcohol at